A Comparative Study of 5.5mm Temporal Sclerocorneal Manual Small Incision Cataract Surgery Versus 5.5mm Temporal Clear Corneal Extended-incision Phacoemulsification with Implantation of a 5.25mm Rigid pmma Intraocular lens in the Bag

Objective: Aim of the study is to Compare the astigmatism induced by a reduced temporal sclerocorneal tunnel incisionmanual small incision cataract surgery with an extended temporal clear corneal Phacoemulsification of similar width .Methods: A Prospective, randomised controlled study was carried out in 224 selected patients who were again dividedinto two groups - Group A (112 patients) and Group B (112 patients). Group A patients underwent temporal manualsmall incision cataract surgery with a 5.5 mm sclerocorneal incision and Group B underwent phacoemulsification bya 2.8 mm clear corneal temporal incision which was extended to 5.5 mm before IOL implantation. In both groups, a5.25 mm rigid PMMA IOL was implanted in the bag. UCVA and BCVA of both group of patients was quantified andanalyzed at 1 week and at 6 weeksObservation: It was seen that the mean surgically Induced astigmatism in group A (N=112) was 0.5625D , which wasslightly lesser than that in Group B (N=112) which was 0.65D, although the p-value of 0.26 indicated that there wasstatistically no significant difference in visual outcomes between the two groups of patients. Here, a p-value of < 0.05was considered statistically significant.Conclusion: In Skilled and Safe hands, refractive outcomes following performing a 5.5mm temporal sclerocornealfrown-incision manual small incision cataract surgery and a phacoemulsification procedure by a 2.8mm temporal clearcorneal incision extended to 5.5mm for implanting a 5.25mm rigid PMMA IOL , are comparable.